


The Authority of Silver

by iberiandoctor (Jehane)



Category: Les Misérables (TV 2018)
Genre: A good dom and a mean dom, A much better use for those wanted posters, Caning, Discipline, Light BDSM, M/M, Pining, Post-Seine, Punishment, Redemption, Rescuers being rescued, Rivette's Confused Boner, Sexy suffering, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-07-25 01:07:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20024020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: The coin, the cane, the compromise. Or, Rivette and Valjean may have pulled Javert out of the Seine, but Javert isn’t the only one who ends up being rescued.





	The Authority of Silver

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kainosite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kainosite/gifts).



It had been an exceedingly long day. This was poor excuse for Rivette’s temporary lapse of discipline, but it was the only one he had presently available.

It had, in fact, been the longest and most trying day in a series of increasingly lengthy and trying days which had finally erupted in violence. Disgruntled citizens had hoped to pull off the same bloody coup their comrades had two years before, when Charles X had been de-throned, and his optimistically rosy-cheeked portrait had been unceremoniously removed from all government buildings, including the Prefecture of Police. But this time, it looked as if Louis-Philippe and his official portrait would escape that humiliating fate. Over the course of the past two days, the rebels had been defeated, and peace had been restored once again to the streets of Paris.

 _No thanks to the Chief,_ thought a small, traitorous part of Rivette’s brain. He thrust it away out of force of habit, but there was no denying the kernel of truth it contained. 

It was, of course, only the smallest kernel, for Javert had otherwise been diligent in his responsibilities from the moment he had taken up his position at the Prefecture. Despite the gossip about his background — a policeman from a small provincial town, a former bagne guard, perhaps the son of a freed slave or a refugee from the colonies — he had proven himself competent in his duties. After his elevation to Chief Inspector in the wake of the July Revolution, he had imposed rigorous standards of discipline on the laissez-faire offices run by his predecessor. 

Despite some initial grumbling, the men had also come to appreciate Javert’s new regime almost as much as their superiors did. Though they chafed under the longer hours, and the ignominy of being at the receiving end of Javert’s harsh tongue — or, when he was especially angry, his reproving cane — they could not deny the resulting advantages of this work ethic, which included a certain prestige that the office of the Prefecture had not known before. 

For his part, Rivette kept his personal feelings regarding the Chief’s implacable discipline — and the Chief’s silver-topped cane — to himself. As Javert’s second-in-command, it wasn’t his place to approve or disapprove, but to see to it the Chief’s orders were carried out.

As far as Rivette was concerned, the only issue which might found any basis for criticism of the Chief, the one chink in his immaculate armour, was his inexplicable interest in —a more cynical customer would say _obsession with_ — a certain convict, the criminal mastermind whose real name was Jean Valjean, once of Faverolles in the Brie. 

Rivette had been subjected to the details of the case history, time and again. This much was established: Valjean was a recidivist who had spent his adult life amid the prison hulks of Toulon, and who had practised a lengthy fraud on the citizens of Montreuil. The next part was more conjecture on Javert’s part: Valjean had secretly escaped from the bagne in the mid-1820s, and was now in Paris, a fugitive from justice. 

Additionally, Javert was convinced this Valjean was in fact behind the events of the insurgency, which rather seemed to Rivette to be speculation without evidentiary backing. Nevertheless, Javert had been so certain that when open insurrection had broken out over the city, and every serving officer of the police had been ordered to the front lines of the unrest, their implacable Chief Inspector had not joined them. Instead, he had traded his pristine uniform for the rough garb of a workingman, and had headed to the barricades in an undercover mission to ferret out the rebellion’s supposed leader, Jean Valjean, once and for all. 

And so it had fallen to Rivette to single-handedly coordinate the Prefecture’s response to the June Rebellion. In the Chief’s absence, he had revised plans to provide support to the National Guard’s efforts at the rue Saint Martin and Saint Denis — Gisquet’s original proposals had not taken into account the present staff strength, or the on-the-ground configurations of the Cloître Saint-Merry — and had given the men orders to take up their designated positions. 

One or two had looked askance at him. Lefoy had muttered, “Why would the Chief just up sticks and leave you in charge?” 

“Chief had his reasons,” Rivette had said, stoutly, although what he’d really wanted to say was, _I’m just as shocked as you are, my friend_.

Gisquet himself hadn’t so much as batted an eyelid over Rivette’s seemingly ad hoc field promotion. Their former Chief had seemed overwhelmed enough by the sudden influx of 20,000 badly-dressed part-time militia and appeared grateful for any help he could get. 

Rivette had slept at his desk that first night, and at dawn he had been summoned to present the Prefecture’s interim report to the Comte de Lobau himself. To his credit, the Marshall of their national forces didn’t appear disconcerted over not being briefed by the Chief Inspector himself, but of course he must have been wondering where the devil Javert had gotten to.

Rivette had, of course, been pondering that very question. He’d spent every spare moment scouring the reports from the barricades for any mention of police spies being taken prisoner, trying not to wonder if he had seen his Chief for the last time.

When Javert had finally returned to the offices that afternoon, Rivette’s knees had actually almost folded in relief. It must have been the lack of sleep. 

Uncharacteristically, Javert hadn’t commented on Rivette’s rumpled clothes or undisciplined posture. He’d apparently found the fugitive, but that Valjean had let him get away, which made no sense — surely a hardened criminal as Valjean would never have freed a police inspector who had hunted him for so many years. But then, Javert hadn’t been making a great deal of sense. His piercing gaze appeared almost haunted, as if fixed on a distant object too far away for Rivette to discern. When he changed back into uniform, Rivette could not help but notice that his stock was fastened improperly. 

To distract his Chief, Rivette had suggested a patrol along the waterfront. Along the way, the temptation to touch Javert had proved too great; he’d reached out to straighten the Chief’s skewed collar, and Javert had smacked his hand away with a brutality that shocked him.

“Sorry, sir,” he’d muttered, but Javert had continued to glare at him with barely contained ferocity. Rivette realised that ferocity had always been there, held in check by Javert’s iron will — and now something was causing that implacable will to break down.

He should have been surprised when the waterfront patrol happened upon a certain convict, holding a young man in his arms, both of them covered in grime from the sewers. He should have been surprised when Valjean pleaded to be allowed to take the young man to safety, and even more surprised when Javert had actually agreed.

It must have been the lack of sleep; it had been a long day. And after the events of that day, nothing about Jean Valjean — or about his Chief’s response to Valjean — could surprise him any longer.

Or so he had thought, before Javert had returned to the Prefecture in the depths of that night. Rivette had spent the evening clearing the final reports of the fighting before taking a quick forty winks in the cloakroom; he’d emerged to find Javert finishing a letter to the Prefect.

What the Chief had said to him had shocked him to the core: Javert had let Jean Valjean go free.

_“An act of madness. That man… everything I’ve ever believed to be true, everything I’ve lived my life by. And he … no matter. I will be resigning from my position... I have brought myself and the police into disrepute.”_

Resigning? Because of the convict? It was unthinkable. Rivette had started to babble something about _One mistake out of a lifetime of service!_ , but he could see Javert wasn’t listening. In Javert’s gaze was a bottomless abyss. 

He handed the letter abruptly to Rivette, and then took up his hat and cane. “I need some fresh air. I’m going for a walk.”

It had been an exceedingly long day, Rivette’s second without proper sleep. It was the only excuse available for his next and entirely uncharacteristic act.

After Javert had quitted the premises, Rivette opened the letter. It took longer than it ought, because his hands were shaking. 

He only needed to read the opening lines of Javert’s message to the Prefect to understand that it was the missive of an officer seeking to resign from his position, and also from his life.

Clearly Javert must have taken ill. Perhaps the rebels had injured him at the barricades, or he had struck his head accidentally at the sewers. But whatever the reason, he needed to be prevented from surrendering to this temporary insanity.

Throwing all decorum to the wind, Rivette seized his own coat and hat and took off into the night after his Chief.

*

The night was dark and silent, the starless sky obscured by clouds. Rivette’s laboured breathing echoed in his lungs, his footsteps loud on the cobblestones of the Île de la Cité, drowning out all other surrounding noise save that of his pounding heart. 

Incongruously, he imagined the familiar whip-crack of his Chief’s voice — _Slow, Rivette, always too slow!_ — and the sound of it was strangely comforting.

He thought he could make out Javert’s uncompromising figure in the distance ahead of him on the Quai de I’Horloge, but although he pursued it with all his might, he drew no closer. Still, doggedly, he kept up the pursuit, his blood hammering in his ears, as if chasing a criminal in full flight along the banks of the Seine.

His rapid steps took him to the Pont au Change, just visible in the darkness from the sulfurous light of a street lantern. He hesitated for a moment, then hastened across. Beyond the bridge, he could see the margin of the Quai de Gêvres, the lights in the houses lining the quay extinguished. Below him, there was a dizzying drop and the crashing roil of the Seine, above whose roar rose the distinct sound of a splash. 

Rivette looked down. 

He saw a tall hat, abandoned under the lantern on the edge of the parapet, alongside a slim black cane topped with a ball of moulded silver, with which he was immediately, intimately familiar. 

*

Rivette would have been the first to admit he often brought it on himself. A tap on the breast when he fell short of the Chief’s standards, the cold sensation of silver unmistakable even through layers of wool; a rap across the knuckles for more major infractions —just painful enough to make him bite the inside of his cheek, not enough to impair the thrill of guilt and humiliation and something that was neither of the two — meted out with exacting discipline by a most exacting hand. 

Then there had been the punishment that had occurred when he had let a thief get away. 

It had been eleven months ago. A youngish woman had been apprehended red-handed by the proprietor of the Elysium Café at the Place Saint-Martin; Rivette had been passing by and heard the commotion. The woman had protested her innocence; she’d been slender and comely, all dark eyes and haughty cheekbones. Rivette hadn’t secured her with his cuffs, and he’d been caught off-guard when she had slipped free of the proprietor’s grasp and darted out of the side door into the crowd. 

“Too slow,” he’d admitted to the Chief, after he’d turned in his detailed report that night. The hour had been late, the Prefecture deserted. The ordinary course would have been to make his report first thing in the morning, but Rivette had discovered it was best to come clean at the earliest opportunity. 

Javert frowned. The expected look of displeasure creased his handsome face, but there was a glint in his eyes that Rivette had not seen before. “That sounds like the least of your mistakes,” he drawled. “Too over-confident, too easily distracted. Too _weak_. Isn’t that right?”

Rivette swallowed, heat crawling up his cheeks. “I couldn’t say, sir.”

“Then I’ll say it for you.” Javert rose from his chair, and stalked around his desk to face Rivette. “ _Inexcusable_ weakness. Was it sympathy, did you feel sorry for her? Or — this woman, this thief, was she handsome? Could it be that you were improperly distracted?” 

His closeness was menacing; it made Rivette start to sweat. His voice shook shamefully: “I’m sorry, sir.”

“I’ll give you real cause to be sorry,” Javert had muttered. He took off his coat and jacket, rolled up his shirt-sleeves, and, picking up his cane and gesturing towards his desk, said, “Bend over.”

Rivette had gaped, uncomprehending. “Over your papers, sir?”

“Yes. Don’t make me wait.” 

Rivette found himself bending over Javert’s desk, leaning across the day’s reports and miscellaneous paperwork and several additional leaves of Jean Valjean’s wanted poster, and Javert had taken the silver-topped cane to Rivette’s backside. 

He’d made Rivette count out six strokes, as well, while he’d hissed, between his teeth, a stream of commands: “Let this be a lesson to you…never let your guard down. I expect strict discipline at all times. Don’t let any criminal make a fool out of you! Or of _me_. Do you understand?” 

Rivette told his Chief that he did, trying to withhold back his sobs. It wouldn’t have done to ruin Javert’s documents with further weakness. 

He’d been unable to sit down without pain for days. When he could finally do so, he discovered he’d been seized by a new compulsion to touch himself, all the while picturing the Chief administering that first beating. Rivette found himself surrendering to this impulse on a daily basis, working himself over as he recalled the smell of Javert’s exertion, the flutter of his eyelashes, his flushed skin… and finding his release so rapidly it was embarrassing.

Of course, these strange feelings were as unseemly as they were embarrassing. Rivette had never known his superior to be intimate with anyone — the men muttered that he was married to his job, and there were no rumours of dalliances or sweethearts. Certainly he would be appalled to learn of this new and shocking obsession on the part of his second-in-command. 

Whereas Rivette, a worldly man no stranger to carnal attentions, ought to be appalled at _himself_ for this fixation on an unmarried man who seemed to only have room in his own obsessions for one singular convict.

 _Let this be a lesson to you,_ his memory of Javert said, and then it added, treacherously: _You are mine._

As he worked himself over grimly, another even more treacherous part of Rivette wondered if Javert ever imagined saying similar words to Jean Valjean.

*

The furtive nights Rivette had spent dreaming of the Chief’s cane had not gone to waste after all. Rivette recognised its moulded silver head in a heartbeat.

Panic and purpose flared through him. It took a moment to cast off his coat and hat, and another to fling himself into the dark abyss of the Seine.

The Seine was fatally cold, its depths blacker than the night sky overhead. Rivette was a strong swimmer — he had grown up on the north coast — but this was like nothing he had ever known. The current took hold of him like a vise, dragging him down and crushing the air from his body, shrugging off all Rivette’s attempts to swim against it. It was monstrously strong: stronger than the doomed insurrection, stronger than Rivette’s longing for his Chief’s discipline, stronger than Javert’s own obsession with Jean Valjean; it would not be equalled.

Yet Rivette sought to be equal to it. After all, had he not learned from the most infallible of hunters to be unstinting in his own pursuit, to hunt for the man he dreamed about? He tried to calm himself, to conserve his energy, for it would not do to find Javert and to no longer possess the strength required to rescue the both of them. He could just imagine the tongue-lashing: _What a poorly-executed plan, Rivette! Did you think you would be strong enough to save me from myself?_

 _No plan at all, sir,_ Rivette thought, mutinously, and once again he cast caution to the wind. He swam, as powerfully as he could, in the direction of the currents, so that he could follow where they had taken the Chief — even if it meant that, once he reached Javert, he might no longer have the air to make the return journey.

Finally, when he had reached the last ounce of strength, the last dram of breath in his lungs, all hope appearing lost, his desperate fingers closed around wet fabric… and he realised, even as his vision dimmed around him, that he had, at last, found his Chief.

*

Rivette regained his senses by slow increments. He lay bonelessly on the cobblestones of the Quai de Gêvres, after having coughed up what felt like half the Seine. The clouds had parted, and the stars shone down from the sky.

Dimly, he became aware of activity beside him. A large man in shirtsleeves, working over a supine body that Rivette gradually realised belonged to Javert. 

“Chief,” Rivette tried to say, attempting to struggle upright. He was mostly successful; his efforts brought him face to face with the man he’d seen before, the convict Jean Valjean.

Soaking wet, Valjean nevertheless cut a powerful figure under the night sky. Rivette remembered that power dragging him, half-drowning, from the Seine, and Javert with him. Valjean held Rivette’s gaze with some difficulty, water dripping from his lashes and greying hair and into his broad, weathered face. 

“He’s alive,” Valjean said, “but he needs dry clothes, a bed, and a doctor.”

Rivette looked down at the anguished features of his Chief. As Valjean had said, Javert was still breathing, laboriously, though his skin was cold to the touch and his lips seemed almost pallid. A bruise discoloured part of his unconscious face. His right hand was bleeding; Valjean had attempted to bind it with rags which appeared to have been torn from his shirt. Rivette didn’t know where the Chief lived, and he was sure that Javert would rather drown than be conveyed in this state to the Prefecture or the Hôtel-Dieu.

“My rooms are close by,” he said. His head had begun to pound viciously; he was barely strong enough to stand, let alone to lift the Chief. “Will you help me with him?”

Surely Valjean would have had no earthly reason to assist, this dangerous criminal whom Javert had been pursuing for years — save that he had, astonishingly, released Javert from the barricades, had saved Javert again from the Seine, and in so doing had saved Rivette’s life as well.

The man bowed his head, now, the starlight turning his greying hair into a crown. “I will,” he said, and, rising, took Javert’s limp form into his arms.

*

Rivette’s portress, rousted from her bed, had to be convinced to send for a doctor. However, in the aftermath of the insurrection’s bloodshed, it seemed there were few doctors to be found at this time of night. 

Finally, a nervous-looking young man who admitted to being a doctor-in-training was persuaded to delay his shift at the Hôtel-Dieu. He set Javert’s fractured wrist, listened to Javert’s lungs, and, muttering at the dimness of the candlelight, bandaged the bruise on Javert’s head.

“I’ll try to stop in on him later, but with all this fighting I'm not sure when my shift will end. If he wakes before then, give him some of this laudanum, and come look for me at the hospital. Name of Despiat.” The young doctor looked up from his efforts at last to Valjean and Rivette. “In the meantime, gentlemen, it looks as if you both could do with some sleep yourselves.”

From his position at the Chief’s bedside, Rivette was vaguely aware of his own exhaustion, but it seemed a minor matter in the face of Javert’s present straits. 

The Chief lay sleeping under his, Rivette’s, mostly-clean sheets. In the moonlight from the bedroom’s window, he looked shockingly defenceless. For the first time in their acquaintance, Rivette realised that, while Javert had always seemed such a towering, intimidating presence, in truth he was shorter than Rivette himself. 

Rivette couldn’t recollect if it had been Valjean or Madame Morand who had dressed the Chief in one of his, Rivette’s, old nightshirts. Most likely the former, as it seemed he’d also offered Valjean a change of clothing. Rivette wasn’t a small man, but his off-duty clothes looked ludicrous on Valjean’s big frame: the fabric stretched too-tightly across those bulky muscles and showed a slice of mid-calf above the boots Valjean had managed to keep dry.

Placing the seam of Rivette’s Sunday shirt in some jeopardy, Valjean reached into his coat and pressed an astounding number of napoleons into the doctor’s hands.

“Thank you, M. le Docteur,” he said. “Is there anything else we can do for him?”

Despiat shrugged. “With water in the lungs, there’s the danger of fever, and pleurisy that might come after. Keep him away from the miasmas in the streets.”

Of course, that was likely to be easier said than done. Rivette could not find the strength to rise to see the doctor on his way. The task fell to Valjean. Rivette had half-expected the man to slip away in the manner of criminals, but he couldn’t say he was surprised to see Valjean return. 

There was no other chair in Rivette’s bedroom. Valjean leaned against the doorframe, his bulk filling most of the doorway. Now there was no urgent action to be taken, he seemed restless and awkward, ill at ease to the point of diffidence. His broad face was expressionless, giving no clue as to what might have driven him to risk his life to save the inspector who had hunted him for years and the deputy who would bring him to justice.

Rivette was dully aware of the weight of his extraordinary obligation to the man. He knew he could never repay the debt he owed Valjean for Javert’s rescue, if not his own. Javert could not speak the required words — indeed, even if the Chief were conscious, he might not have been willing to thank the man for saving the life he had seemed determined to cast away — but it would not have been the first time Rivette had shouldered a burden for his Chief.

Valjean raised his eyebrows at Rivette’s halting words. “Not so sure your boss would be thanking me,” he replied, as if he could read Rivette’s mind. “Why would he do what he did? I told him I’d come quietly.” 

Rivette felt a flare of annoyance, as well as an even more treacherous one of sympathy. How many times had he asked himself similar questions as to the Chief’s motivations? Javert’s intentions, like his past, were a mystery to those who served him. How could any mere criminal — even one as surprising as Jean Valjean — hope to understand him?

“Maybe he didn’t think you’d really turn yourself in,” Rivette muttered, peevishly. “What reason would he have to believe a fugitive and a fraudster? You make very free with your coin, the criminal life must have been good to you.”

This was pure ingratitude, of course; Rivette knew he had been willing to compromise whatever principles he had as long as Valjean was expending that money in aid of the Chief. And indeed Valjean’s eyes flashed with outrage at this pettiness. 

Drawing himself up to his full height, he shouted, “The money is mine! Every sou of it, honestly earned!” 

This gave Rivette pause. He made a placating gesture, for Valjean looked angry enough to rip the door from its hinges. “From your time in Toulon?” he ventured. If so, Valjean would have just spent his entire life savings on the doctor for Javert. 

Valjean glared for a moment longer, and then the colour in his face subsided and he sagged back against the wall. “No. Four years’ worth of earnings from the factory in Montreuil. Financed by silver from the Bishop of Digne.”

Rivette remembered the details. “I recall you stole from the Bishop, and robbed a child on the road three leagues from Digne.”

“The Bishop entrusted the silver to me,” Valjean said. In his voice was no longer anger, but a deep weariness. “But you’re right about that last part. I did rob that boy, Gervais, and I regret it every day of my life. See, here is the proof of the crime.”

He retrieved an object from his right boot and held it out to Rivette. Rivette angled it toward the light of the candle: an ancient 40-sou piece, its silver face rubbed flat from years of handling. Ever the policeman, Rivette could not help but observe that its circumference precisely matched a curious circular mark on Valjean’s outstretched palm. 

Rivette weighed the coin in his own palm. “A lifetime in prison for 40 sous? Must say that wasn’t the best bargain, Monsieur.”

“At the time I knew no better,” Valjean said, heavily. “Nineteen years in prison, for stealing bread to feed my family — what did I understand but a life of crime? But the Bishop believed that a man like me could change. He bought my soul for God with the silver, and I tried to live a new and honest life for him.” 

Criminals always had one excuse or another for their various sins, one more fanciful than the other, but all the same Rivette found himself reluctantly believing this story. In the candlelight, Valjean’s countenance was now calm, all traces of anger gone, dark eyes seeming to echo long nights of wrestling with his conscience and with God for the sake of his immortal soul. 

“Did you succeed?” But of course Rivette already knew the answer to this question.

Valjean smiled wryly. “They say pride goes before a fall, Monsieur. I built my factory, and I allowed the people of Montreuil to make me their mayor, and I forgot myself. I saw fit to judge one of my employees who was in need, and discovered my crime only when it was too late.” 

His wide, generous mouth twisted with obvious guilt. Rivette recalled the account of an altercation with a prostitute. It was not difficult to understand what had become of Valjean’s employee. 

“And that is why you decided to denounce yourself, in Arras? Because you were convinced your sins against this woman would be uncovered sooner or later?” At least that was how Javert had described it to Rivette. Come to think of it, Javert hadn’t sounded particularly convinced about this version of events himself.

“No! No,” Valjean said; once again, the flare of outrage, followed by an effortful restraint. “It wasn’t like that. The woman had been deceived by a scoundrel, and then deceived into giving their child to swindlers. When I discovered the truth, it was too late to help her — but I swore to help the child, or die trying.” 

He swallowed. “Why did I denounce myself in Arras? Inspector Javert had offered to resign; all I needed to do to secure my safety, and that of the child, was to continue in my position as mayor. But I could not in good conscience let an innocent man go to prison in my place, Monsieur. In the end, I could do nothing but surrender to God’s will.”

His large hand closed convulsively, fingers digging in over the circular mark on his palm. His eyes fixed on the silver coin in Rivette’s grasp as if under a compulsion. His face was full of suffering, and in that moment, incongruously noble.

Rivette felt the strange sensation of the ground shifting beneath his feet. Trying to right himself, he said, “But after all that, you decided to escape from custody again. Didn’t God stop you that time?”

He thought Valjean might raise his voice again, but the man leaned back against the door; his eyes never left the coin. “I had to escape,” he muttered. “The girl had no one but me. I swore to take care of her until she was grown. And now she is…” He swallowed again, his mouth trembled with some impenetrable emotion. “Now she has a sweetheart, and is no longer in need of me, I am finally free to return to custody.” 

Rivette was struck silent. Here were the man’s secrets laid bare at last — the secrets Javert had striven for years to uncover, secrets which Javert might not believe even if he’d been awake to hear Valjean confess them. Nevertheless, despite himself, Rivette believed every anguished word. 

“How did you know to save us?” he said, eventually. It seemed he already knew _why_. It was in the same way that a man condemned by society might have chosen to return good for evil, might have chosen pity over revenge and let his enemy go free. 

Valjean shrugged helplessly. “I told him I would come quietly, but he didn’t wait for my surrender. When I left my house, the carriage was leaving. I followed it to the Prefecture. Could I make myself enter that place, and yield myself to him…? An hour or so passed before I saw him leave, and then I watched you run out of the building after him. I could see that something was amiss, and so I followed you both.”

Rivette watched the emotions wrench themselves across Valjean’s face: guilt and self-doubt and selflessness, emotions which, in his long career with the police, he had never known hardened criminals to display. Treacherous pity took hold of him. He could not help but admire this convict, this man who had nevertheless sought to act mercifully, to ruin himself rather than ruin another, to subordinate himself to God and redemption and the discipline of the law.

For how long had Rivette harboured a secret resentment toward the man with whom his Chief was obsessed? For the first time, he thought he might be able to understand that obsession.

He looked back at the Chief where he lay in Rivette’s bed. Javert’s sleep was fitful; his body twitched restlessly, and his uninjured hand clenched and unclenched itself in spasms. Purely to keep the Chief from hurting himself in his infirm state, Rivette reached over and took Javert’s hand in his. 

The Chief’s fingers were calloused from years of discipline, and unnaturally hot: clearly the predicted fever must be taking its hold, making Rivette’s own palm prickle with heat. 

More roughly than he intended, Rivette said, addressing Valjean, “Think he believed you’d really turn yourself in? That he’d got you at last?”

Valjean was silent. Finally, he said, “Yes. If he’d thought I was going to escape again, he’d have come after me. He must have done this because he knew I _wouldn’t_ run.” 

Rivette frowned. He did not understand what Valjean meant, what insight he had into the cataclysm that had overtaken Javert.

Abruptly, Javert clutched Rivette’s fingers. His eyelids flickered, and he muttered, incomprehensibly: "Here is a fugitive from justice, who has broken his ban! This man is a prisoner of the law. What could be more just?”

“It must be the fever,” Rivette began, but Javert was not yet finished. He muttered, “This is what you must do. Deliver up your saviour. Then have the basin of Pontius Pilate brought and wash your claws.”

“Sir, begging your pardon, but you’re not making sense,” Rivette said. He put his free hand to the side of Javert’s face, feeling the rasp of the Chief’s stubble; Javert shook off the comforting touch, in the same convulsion with which he had slapped away Rivette’s earlier attempt to straighten his collar.

“Don’t touch me! Everything I’ve ever believed to be true, everything I’ve lived my life by... How can this be endured?”

Rivette stared into the Chief’s unconscious features, seized with such naked anguish that they looked like a stranger’s, and everything fell into place. Javert would never have abandoned his position — and, with it, his life — if he had felt able to reconcile it with the discovery of Valjean as a just man, capable of redemption, with the unjustness of returning him to the prison hulks to die.

_Begging your pardon, Sir, but you’re a stubborn old dog to have done this — to yourself, and to me._

“He couldn’t live with letting you go,” Rivette said, slowly, to Valjean, as Javert subsided once more into silence. The world was in chaos around him; he could only imagine how Javert must have felt, standing at the edge of the precipice, trying to escape the ruins of his old life.

Valjean stepped from the doorway to stand before the bed. His head was bent, a curiously graceful gesture in such a big man; Rivette realised he was still staring at the coin, which Rivette had placed on the bedclothes in order to clasp Javert’s hand. 

“What do we do now, Monsieur? Will you arrest me, now you know the truth about my past?” 

Rivette picked up the coin once more, searching for the right words; his mind was a whirl of confusion. Then a ray of inspiration shot through him, gleaming like silver. 

“Let’s say, instead, that you subject yourself willingly to the authority of the police. Let him understand a way forward from his impasse: that he didn’t let a criminal go free, or deliver a good man to the galleys, but instead that a rehabilitated ex-convict has been given a conditional release.”

Valjean unclenched his hands and spread them once more before Rivette, like supplication. “I told you, as I told him, I don’t require any special favours. I am willing to be delivered to the galleys for my crimes.”

“No! No. That would just mean he would do this to himself again. You know him; has he ever done things by half measures?”

Valjean looked from Rivette to the Chief’s unconscious face. Surprisingly, something like sympathy crooked his lips. “Never. In Toulon, he always expected the strictest discipline, always punished prisoners for the smallest breaches. But in Montreuil, when he offered to resign, I realised those were the same standards to which he held himself.”

Once again, Rivette could feel the sharp crack of Javert’s discipline across his knuckles, across his backside as he bent over Javert’s desk. He could imagine the same grim punishment meted out in public to the prisoners of Toulon — as well as the more private disciplines one might inflict on one’s own self.

In a reflexive gesture, he closed his fist on the coin and felt its hard edges cut into his flesh. He winced at the small hurt, and saw Valjean watching him intently.

“He held us to those standards too,” Rivette muttered. The stoic suffering in Valjean’s gaze, speaking of punishments endured and eventually welcomed, seemed to mirror Rivette’s own.

“You, Monsieur? That’s hard to believe.”

“Let me show you,” Rivette said. The inspiration still clung to him, and he shut out all doubts and followed its lead. Moving on instinct, he placed the coin on the bed, got to his feet, and crossed the room to where Javert’s sodden things had been left for the laundress.

When he took hold of the silver-topped cane, he saw Valjean’s eyes widen. Seemingly without volition, the man wet his lips and took a slow step forward so that he was standing almost toe to toe with Rivette. Rivette could feel the heat curl up through Valjean’s borrowed, too-small clothing, until it lit a fire in his own blood. 

The instinct within him hardened to a shining certainty.

“Face the wall,” he said between his teeth, and Valjean bowed his head and complied. 

An astonishing man, this former convict who had given Javert his life twice over. An impenetrable mass of contradictions — a benevolent thief, a merciful fugitive, a penitent criminal who sought redemption. His large body spread itself obediently against Rivette’s peeling wallpaper, the powerful shoulders bent in an attitude of surrender. 

Rivette moved close enough to see, almost, through the thinly-stretched material of his own shirt, the scars on Valjean’s broad back left by long years of Toulon’s discipline. The smell of Rivette’s soap clung to his skin and the damp, curling ends of his hair. Rivette’s off-duty trousers cleaved too-tightly to the curve of his muscular arse, the sight compelling Rivette in a way that he had never been compelled by another man.

No, that wasn’t true: he couldn’t deny how compelling the Chief was to him. Nor could he deny the basis of the Chief’s obsession with this convict: not now, when the man’s obvious strength and even more obvious surrender stood before him in all its ambiguity and its allure.

He imagined his hand on the cane was Javert’s as he brought it down.

Valjean flinched as the first stroke took him across the meat of his buttocks. The muscles of his back bunched and strained under the shirt. He pressed his forehead to the wall, but otherwise did not cry out.

“The Chief required six at a time,” Rivette panted. He wasn’t sure he recognised his own voice. His pulse was loud in his ears, he felt hot everywhere.

“Then do what you must,” Valjean said. His voice was muffled by the wallpaper. Rivette watched a trickle of sweat roll down the nape of his neck, and was moved, almost, to pity. He battled it away, steeling himself to perform the punishment that Javert would have imposed; the discipline which Valjean himself seemed, unbelievably, to require. 

After the fourth stroke, Valjean’s stoic silence finally yielded. He made a low, helpless sound, and sagged against the wall as if his legs could no longer hold him up. Rivette stopped, his heart pounding rapidly, and he took hold of Valjean by the shoulder.

“Are you all right?”

Valjean swayed, his lips trembling. Under Rivette’s grasp, his skin felt impossibly hot, as if he had caught Javert’s fever. Rivette was acutely aware of the Chief’s presence in the nearby bed, close enough to bear witness to every aspect of Rivette’s performance.

“Finish it,” Valjean murmured, closing his eyes. His skin was ruddy, the candlelight turning his eyelashes to gold. With an effort, he braced himself on his forearms once again, and planted his legs securely on the floor. 

Rivette could no longer ignore the helpless throb between his own legs. He was treacherously aroused, as hard as he’d been in his dreams of Javert holding him down and lashing blows into his flesh. 

He strove for Javert’s grim dispassion, but detachment was impossible in the face of Valjean’s suffering and submission, the willing delivery of his broad body into Rivette’s hands. Instead, Rivette found himself saying, much more kindly than Javert could ever have: “Ready yourself, then. It’ll be over soon enough.”

The fifth stroke landed across Valjean’s thighs. Valjean stifled his cry against his forearm, and managed to stay on his feet, but the sixth and final blow felled him — he staggered, and would have fallen, if Rivette had not thrown his arm around him and held him up.

Valjean groaned, fighting for composure. His powerful body shivered in Rivette’s embrace, the thunder of his heartbeat hammered through them both. Rivette was still painfully hard; he hoped Valjean’s arse hurt too much to discern the erection which pressed, shamefully, against it.

The room was quiet, punctuated only by the sound of their harsh, desperate breathing. Across the room, through the window beside the bed, the dark horizon began to grow lighter as the night moved closer to daybreak.

Finally, Rivette managed to find his voice. “Do you think you still need discipline?” he asked. He’d attempted an impersonal tone, but again his voice was regrettably gentle.

Valjean leaned in Rivette’s arms for a moment longer. Then he drew in a deep breath, and took hold of his own weight, standing upright once more. After another moment, he had recovered sufficiently to turn and face Rivette.

“Not now,” he said, slowly. “But as long as we are alive, God will send more challenges, Monsieur, and who knows if we will be able to withstand them?”

Seen in the gathering dawn, Valjean’s weary face seemed transformed by the punishment he had endured: purified, virtuous, irrefutably noble. Rivette was seized with the wild impulse to fall to his knees, to clasp those scarred, strong thighs and beg for forgiveness — or for Valjean to take hold of his shameful erection and work him over until he pleaded for mercy. 

With some difficulty, he took a step back, placing Javert’s silver-topped cane against Valjean’s chest. Formally, he said: “Then, Monsieur, will you surrender to the conditional parole of the police?”

Valjean exhaled, and gave the word. His eyes were transparent; in the thin clear light of daybreak, Rivette could almost fancy he could see to the bottom of the man’s soul. 

The silence between them was interrupted by a rasping sound that came from Rivette’s bed. It seemed Javert was awake: weak and blinking and seized by a coughing fit that left him temporarily unable to form words. 

Without transition, Rivette found himself on his knees at Javert’s side. 

“Sir, you’re all right. You’re with me, you’re safe. Save your strength.”

Javert stared into Rivette’s face with bloodshot, half-shuttered eyes. For a moment, Rivette wasn’t certain that his words had been heard, let alone understood by Javert. Then the Chief’s good hand closed around the coin on the bedsheets; he held it up to Rivette with fingers that shook.

In a creaking voice, Javert said, “Have him take this back.”

It took another moment for Rivette to understand why. 

Valjean had come to stand at Rivette’s shoulder. Rivette held the coin out to him.

“On your word of honour, Monsieur.”

Valjean nodded, and took the coin almost reluctantly, as if shouldering a burden that he might no longer have to bear alone.

God willing, if Rivette could help it, he no longer would.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to S. for the beta!


End file.
